Lovebox

Newham Generals

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Playing on the Main Stage Friday.

Newham Generals – Generally Speaking biog:

 How do you follow up a first official single release which spent four weeks at number one? There were two ways Dizzee Rascal’s Dirtee Stank label could go. Look for more pop crossover success along the same lines as the gleeful summer dance-floor smash “Dance Wiv Me”, or try something else altogether.

 Option B it is, then.

 Generally Speaking, the long-awaited debut album by roughneck Forest Gate MC duo Newham Generals, is the knockout artistic punch that East London’s grime scene has always threatened but previously failed to deliver. Lighting up the bleak midwinter of 2008-9 like a flaming Swan Vesta in a petrol-tank, it’s exactly the kind of incendiary musical thrill that tough economic times are supposed to produce.

 If you’ve seen the hard-hitting virals for ‘Bell Dem Slags’ or ‘Violence’, or the nightmare-inducing video for the single ‘Head Get Mangled’ – shot on location in a derelict mental hospital in Epsom – you’ll have some idea of the kind of 18-rated sonic rampage that’s on the agenda here. But in backing up the uncompromising lyrical stance you’d expect of tracks with those kinds of titles with production that moulds their proud home-grown heritage of reggae sound-systems, drum ‘n’ bass, UK garage, grime and maybe even a little bit of Hackney ‘Ardkore into a fearsome new hybrid which no-one yet has a name for, Newham Generals have created an album with the power to move feet and minds at the same time as it outrages readers of The Daily Mail.

 This kind of spontaneous creative combustion doesn’t happen overnight. And in the three years its taken the Newham Generals to fine-tune their powerful musical engine, motor-mouthed mic-chatter Footsie and his laid-back partner in rhyme D Double E have been through a dramatic process of evolution.

 For a start, there used to be three of them. But Newham Generals’ missing third man Munk (heard to great effect on the 2006 mix-tapeGreatest Hits Vol 1) can now be found handing out Christian literature outside Forest Gate train-station.  “His MySpace caption says ‘doing it all for Jesus’”, Footsie grins affectionately, “so there you go, that’s where he went”

 Then there was the bitter-sweet “Lemon” episode. This inspired collaboration with Dizzee Rascal had been slated for inclusion on the latter’s Maths + English album, but had to be withdrawn at the last minute when the copyright holders of “Puff the Magic Dragon” objected to a quotation from that classic primary school crowd-pleaser being used in a lyric which might be construed as condoning drug use (I am not making this up). “We get emails about that tune all day long”, Footsie notes phlegmatically, “as soon as people hear it, they want it in their life”..

 Perhaps most important of all, though, was the time Footsie and D Double E spent on the road with the proprietor of their label. “It’s been a massive challenge”, Footsie admits. “There’s always a little pocket of our fans, which is a great encouragement, but basically the whole place has come to see Dizzee – some of these people don’t even know grime exists”. Playing to crowds who’d never heard their free-flowing shows on Rinse FM, and didn’t care that they were featured on the original version of Lethal B’s ‘Pow!’ gave the Newham Generals a new perspective on where their music had come from, and where it needed to go.

 “A lot of people forget that grime is supposed to be dance music”, Footsie explains. “If you go to its nearest relatives, they’re hard-house and techno - things that people really dance to – but that’s got lost a bit. And what we’ve done is put it back, but keeping a lot of grease in the lyrics”.

 If you want to know just how grimy Newham Generals lyrics can get, check out the classic “Sheckel/Ethel [from EastEnders]/Jeckyl/Seckle/Kettle/Nettle” rhyme-scheme in “Supadup”. Slang dictionary compilers who think they’ve got the measure of “Peng” and “Armshouse” will soon be scratching their heads over “Leng” and “Zax”.

And from crack addiction (“Heard U Been Smoking”) to, well, hatred (“Hatred”), Footsie and Double are happy to explore territory others leave untouched. “We’re not smooth-faced kids saying some mindless stuff that’s really shocking to mums at home” the former insists. “If you take a track like ‘Violence’, there’s no glorification in that. It’s just telling things like they are, because this is the life we’ve lived”.

 Footsie grew up surrounded by speakers that were taller than he was (His dad, Ras Wazair - who can be heard dispensing spiritual advisements on “Mind is A Gun” - was a celebrated reggae drummer, who also used to run King Original Sound, one of East London’s premier sound-systems). He and the more hip-hop minded D Double E met up while they were still at school, and by the time they’d found common cause in drum and bass, “bubbled” between the vocals of old school garage (“which wasn’t even really MC-ing the way a grime MC would think of it, it was more like hosting: so you learnt that as a skill”), and then begun to ride the dark instrumentals that would become grime, they were already – as Double puts it – “four musics deep”.

 “People can say it’s taken a long time” Footsie admits, “but in these last three years, just about anyone you might want to call our competition has failed. Check the forums. Everybody’s upset that their favourite artist is letting them down – this guy’s been dropped, these guys are doing tunes with Trident [not an up-and-coming producer, the Met’s gun-crime squad] it’s all just not going well, and that means there’s a big pile of people out there just waiting to be pleased”. Footsie smiles: “They’re in receive mode…”

 For what they are about to receive, may the Lord make them truly thankful.

Generally Speaking’s indelible blend of homespun beats and black cockney verbal wizardry is about to spray-paint the London borough of Newham onto Britain’s musical map with a toxic flourish.  And if anyone’s still wondering why this not-at-all-health-and-safety-conscious duo chose to name themselves after a hospital…

 “Listen to all ten tracks of this album in one go and you’re gonna need an ambulance”, Footsie warns, “because that’s a heart attack right there”. To quote the sing-a-long chorus of “Head Gets Mangled”: “Only a doctor can save your arse”

 Ben Thompson, Observer Music Monthly